A/N: This story takes place sometime after season 4, but no Jonas and no Pete. I don't pretend to understand why anyone on the show wears one color uniform or another, so any clash with continuity is unintentional and solely for the purpose of fictional meanderings. Reviews are appreciated.
"So, Carter... whatcha wearing?"
Even over the phone, she could hear the sardonic tone in his voice, the one she recognized from years of working together, the one that wasn't entirely joking but held a note of serious question.
"My uniform, sir," she responded with a laugh.
"Mmm... what color?"
"Olive drab."
A pause before he stated, "But that's what you wore yesterday."
"And the day before," she agreed. "I must have 20 sets of this uniform, sir."
He clicked his tongue at her in chastisement. "I prefer the blue on you, Carter," he told her. "Brings out your eyes."
Her breath caught in her throat at the latter comment. Logically, Sam knew that O'Neill could not see the smile plastered over her face as she held the phone to her ear, standing in her kitchen with a mug of coffee in the other hand. And she was grateful that he could not see the pink hue of her cheeks at his almost inappropriate compliment. Or her ear-to-ear grin.
"You haven't done laundry, have you, sir?" she deduced. "You want us to wear blue because that's what you have clean."
She waited a moment for him to process her statement, which, while superficially accusatory, was laced with enough amusement to be construed as entirely friendly.
"You figured me out, Carter," he admitted a moment later. "You mind changing to blue?"
He could have ordered it, she knew. But the colonel rarely gave orders on such superficial matters. Besides, as the leader of their team, it was his prerogative to choose the group's equipment and gear for missions. But considering no missions were scheduled for SG-1 until the following week, it did not really matter what color uniforms they wore on base.
"I don't mind, sir," Sam told him, unable to keep the laughter out of her voice. She still had plenty of time before she was due on base and if the Colonel wanted the team to wear blue, well then why not?
Besides, according to him, it brought out her eyes...
Across town, Jack O'Neill hung up and placed the cordless phone on the kitchen counter next to his steaming cup of coffee. He looked down at the olive drab uniform he'd put on that morning, assuming that Carter would have picked the color. He had no idea why they each owned more of the standard issue green than blue or even tan and brown desert fatigues, but when it came to non-dress uniforms, his closet was a sea of olive drab.
Jack knew she thought he was joking, but he really did prefer Carter in blue. The color was softer, somehow, and despite being the predominant hue of their branch of the military, sometimes seeing her in the dark blue fabric allowed him to forget their relative ranks and positions.
And he could dream about what it would be like to be able to call her every morning without an excuse as stupid as team color coordination.
Two Weeks Later
Sam bit her lip as she looked through the open closet door. On one side, she had her work clothes - uniforms of various colors: olive drab, blue, black, tan, and Air Force blue, including her dress uniforms, still in the plastic bags from the dry cleaners. On the other side, her closet contained an assortment of civilian garb, items she only wore on weekends or evenings. It was on that side, the non-work clothes, that her attention was focused.
What to wear for a team night dinner and movie?
She'd already picked out her favorite pair of jeans - soft and well fitting, but new enough to not look too casual. Now she just needed a top.
As Sam sorted through the garments, her hand hesitated on a dark blue sweater. The fabric was soft and the sleeves were three quarter length, just the right amount for cool evening in early fall. As for the neckline, while the V dipped down enough to show off a hint of cleavage, it was not so much that Sam felt uncomfortable around her teammates.
Besides, it was blue.
"I prefer the blue on you, Carter. Brings out your eyes."
While he'd been referring to her blue uniform, this shirt was the same color. Her cheeks colored as she considered the ulterior motive for her selection, but the embarrassment did not dissuade her from removing the sweater from its hanger and pulling it on over her head. Adding a pair of silver stud earrings and a dab of perfume, Sam ran a hand through her short hair and headed for the front door.
The plan was to meet at O'Malley's for dinner and a few beers before going back to Jack's house to watch movies. Specifically, Teal'c had expressed a desire to watch the Indiana Jones films, something Jack and Sam had been amenable to, although based on his dismissive attitude, Sam suspected that Daniel would critique the movies throughout.
Arriving at the restaurant a few minutes early, Sam spied Jack alone in a booth close to the back and realized that Daniel and Teal'c must not have arrived yet. Admonishing her heart rate to return to normal, she resisted the urge to look outside and see if their other teammates were close behind. Due to the tension that was often present between them, Sam usually avoided being alone with her commanding officer whenever possible. But a second later, his eyes darted in her direction, and his expression lit up in recognition as he raised his hand to give her a slow "over here" wave. The decision was made for her.
Jack stood up as she approached the table, greeting her with his patented, "Carter."
"Hi, Colonel," she said, flashing him a smile which she hoped hid the flush in her cheeks. He looked good in his typical non-work clothes - a pair of jeans, a simple t-shirt, and a leather jacket.
She slid into the booth across from where he'd been seated, but to her surprise, he sat down next to her rather than retaking his seat. "I don't want to sit by Daniel," he explained quickly. "One more critique of the historical inaccuracy of the movie industry might just send me over the edge."
Sam grinned at the humor in his explanation, although she did not quite believe it, especially as he sat closer to her than was strictly necessary. The sitting side-by-side thing was something he'd been doing more and more of late, especially when they were in a group. At first she hadn't noticed it, or at least, she'd chosen to ignore the implications. Then, once the behavior became apparent, she chalked it up to showing a unified military side of SG-1.
But if she were honest with herself, Sam would have to admit that he probably chose to sit next to her so that he could make quiet comments that only she could hear. Sometimes in briefings, he would quietly ask her questions, completely serious inquiries requesting clarification on some point or another. But more often than not, his private asides were jokes or sarcastic witticisms which would provoke her into genuine laughter.
"Nice sweater," he said after a moment.
Sam felt the heat rising in her cheeks again as she answered, "Thanks."
I wore it for you.
Some part deep inside of her wanted to say the words out loud, just to see how he would react. Years had passed since the day they'd been forced to admit their feelings for each other during the zatarc testing. Did he still feel the same way? Or was this continuing infatuation she had for her commanding officer as one sided as it sometimes felt?
A moment later, he looked at her curiously and asked, "Is that perfume?"
The question took her aback for a few seconds. Why would he ask her that, as if she never wore perfume? True, she rarely did when on duty. The indulgence wasn't fitted to their working environment, but sometimes when she went out...
Finally, she answered stiffly, "Yes."
Jack nodded. "I like it."
"Um... thank you. Sir."
Thankfully, the awkwardness was quickly broken by the arrival of Daniel and Teal'c, who slipped into the booth across from them. The four team members determined the meals they intended to order with military precision and after informing the waiter, turned their attention to regular conversation.
"I'm just saying, the movie over dramatizes archeological field work," Daniel stated. "I can't tell you how many times a student would come into class with a bull whip and a fedora asking when we'd be fighting Nazis."
Laughing, Sam demanded, "Did that really happen?"
"Well... no. But you get the point. Archeology is a lot of hard, painstaking work and it is rarely exciting."
Jack piped up with, "Says the archeologist who explores distant planets on a weekly basis."
"Well, that's different," Daniel allowed.
Teal'c regarded the three of them for a moment before stating solemnly, "I believe I will enjoy this movie."
"You'll like all of them," Jack agreed, "Well, all but the last one. That crystal skull nonsense was kind of hokey."
Daniel shot him a look of irritation. "Really, Jack?"
Ignoring their similar experience with alien crystal skulls, the colonel shrugged unapologetically, and Sam laughed at his expression. As Daniel huffed and turned to focus his arguments on a more attentive Teal'c, Jack inclined his head towards her.
"This is why I didn't want to sit by him," he murmured.
""Maybe if you didn't rile him up so much?" she suggested quietly.
"What fun is that?"
The tilt of his head to speak to her had brought Jack's shoulder into contact with hers, and surprisingly, he did not pull back but let the touch continue. Sam wondered if she should shift away to put more space between them, but she hesitated.
They were in a room full of people, having dinner with Daniel and Teal'c for crying out loud! What was the harm in enjoying his solid presence next to her? Maybe it was her imagination, but she could almost feel his body heat through the thick leather of his jacket. And as she concentrated, Sam realized that she could sense just the barest hint of cologne.
As they finished dinner and the waiter came to collect their plates, Jack asked about the dessert menu. Listing out the options, the server got no further than, "Apple pie ala mode-" before the colonel interrupted him.
"Pie. I'll have the pie."
"Yes, sir. Anyone else?"
Sam shook her head as Daniel passed on the food and Teal'c simply gave one slow shake of his head. But before the waiter could leave, Jack turned to Sam and asked, "Come on, Carter. Don't you want dessert?"
"No thanks, sir. I'm pretty full."
"Too full for pie?" he asked, his excitement over the dessert obvious.
With a laugh, Sam said, "Yes, sir. I'll pass."
The waiter left to put in the dessert order and Sam was refocusing her attention on a story Daniel was telling when Jack whispered to her softly, "You can have a bite of mine. If you want."
His offer was so simple, so incredibly mundane, that it took Sam a minute to realize how profound it really was.
A bite of his pie.
Not only was he offering to share one of his most favorite desserts, but he did so knowing full well that Sam almost never ate dessert. Sweets were one of the things she usually denied herself in an effort to keep fit. But by proffering just a bite of the pie, Jack knew that she had no solid basis to refuse a taste of the tempting dessert.
And when the waiter brought the slice of apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it did look delicious. Jack dug into it immediately, ignoring the silence that descended on the table as his teammates' eyes watched him devour the slice of fruit-filled pastry.
But before he finished it, Jack stopped for a moment and picked up Sam's fork from her side of the table. Holding out the utensil to her, he said, "You know you want some."
Unconsciously, Sam licked her lips as she imagined the flavor. There was something about good old fashioned apple pie that reminded her of home and family. It wasn't too sugary or too tart, and the flavor was not overwhelming like many chocolate desserts. And the fruit made it arguably more healthy than at least some sweets.
"Okay," she relented finally, taking the fork from him. "I'll try it."
Ignoring the way he beamed at her, she took a bite. The flavor was just as she imagined - sweet but not too sweet, delectable in its own unique way. While the pie was not the best she'd ever tasted, it was pretty good.
"Thank you sir," she said, setting down her fork and rewarding him with a smile.
He grinned back at her and proceeded to finish the dessert with gusto.
By the time they got to Jack's place, it was getting late, but they decided to watch the first Indiana Jones movie anyway. Teal'c sat ram-rod straight with wide eyes as he viewed the film. Daniel thumbed through a book he'd brought to distract himself from the "farce of archeology fed to the masses in the form of entertainment," as he termed it. Sam found herself on the other side of the couch from Jack, separated by a few feet of empty cushion.
He'd brought her an open beer when he sat down next to her. Teal'c had declined an alcoholic beverage, just as he always did, but Daniel accepted his beer gratefully with a muttered comment about alcohol being the only thing that could improve the movie.
Leaning over to Sam, Jack murmured, "For Christmas, I'm getting Daniel a bull whip and a fedora."
Sam giggled despite herself. "I'll get him the leather jacket," she added.
"Oh, well if you're handing out leather jackets, you can sign me up for your Christmas list," he joked.
"You already have a leather jacket, sir," she pointed out with a nod at the item in question.
"Never know. Might need a back-up."
"I hope not," she said automatically. He looked at her quizzically, and she elaborated, slightly embarrassed, "That one suits you."
"You think so?"
With a smile, she answered, "Oh yeah."
Despite being a few years older than her (was it really 16 years?), she had always considered Colonel O'Neill to be extremely handsome. Even when the brown in his hair faded to silver, it just made him look more distinguished. Besides, he was still more physically fit than most men half his age, and he still managed to exude a bad-boy aura despite being almost as straight laced of a military officer as she was herself.
Not for the first time, Sam wondered what it would be like to be in a relationship with Jack - to really be able to call him by his first name, to be able to touch him whenever she liked or flirt with him openly. Considering that her relationship history was a graveyard of dead lovers and would-be suitors, she had trouble picturing a future with the colonel. Besides, his own baggage weighed heavily on him with shadows in his eyes in the figures of a failed marriage and a lost child.
But maybe, just maybe, they were both broken in the right ways that together they could make a whole. Of course, Sam knew that such a thing could never happen while Air Force regulations hung over their heads like the sword of Damocles. But maybe someday?
As the movie went on, she found herself growing more and more tired. Whether it was the food in her belly or the beer lulling her into a relaxing trance, she let her head droop against the back of the couch as Harrison Ford's voice washed over her.
"Should we wake her up?"
"No, let her sleep. She barely sleeps as it is, spending half her time in the lab."
Sam heard the voices distantly, but they registered on the same level of realization that the movie was over and that Jack's couch was extremely comfortable, especially as she found her head on the cushion leaned up against a warm, jean-clad leg. A combination of her fatigue and the warm, safe feeling of sleeping next to her commanding officer allowed her to ignore the voice in her head insisting that she get up.
"She left her car at the restaurant," Daniel pointed out. "We were going to give her a lift back..."
"I'll drive her home," Jack assured him.
And then, there was silence and Sam fell into a deeper sleep.
She awoke to the smell of bacon and coffee. As Sam opened her eyes, she noticed that the beginning tinges of sunrise could be detected outside of Jack's living room windows. Looking down, she realized that she'd slept the entire night on his couch, and that sometime in the night she'd been covered up with a soft quilt.
Pushing herself to her feet, Sam rubbed lazily at her eyes as she made her way into the kitchen. Her gaze immediately fell upon Jack frying bacon on the stove while simultaneously flipping pancakes on a griddle.
"Morning, Carter," he said, clearly amused. Sam knew she must look frightful from having just woken up - eyes red and hair pointed in all directions. But the just-having-woken-up part of her brain had trouble caring.
"Coffee," she responded bluntly.
Jack chuckled as he moved to pour her a cup of the delicious smelling liquid.
"Didn't know you were such an addict for caffeine, Carter," he observed.
She did not answer him but accepted the steaming mug gratefully. After taking a few sips of the hot coffee, her mind began to function normally and Sam said, "You should have woken me up last night, sir."
"You needed the sleep."
She knew that protesting was useless, that whatever damage her staying the night might cause them was done. Besides, the only ones who knew of her location were Teal'c and Daniel, and their discretion was guaranteed. Her car would not even give her away as it was parked back at the restaurant.
The perverse thought entered Sam's mind that if she and Jack wanted to engage in an illicit affair, team nights would be the perfect cover.
"Breakfast smells good," she commented lightly.
Jack shrugged without looking at her. "Nothing special, just bacon and pancakes."
Considering that the few morning meals she didn't skip altogether came from the base cafeteria, Sam found the aromas mouthwatering.
They quickly fell into a comfortable silence as he finished cooking and she set two place settings at the kitchen table. He served her first, but Sam waited for him to sit down across from her before digging in to the delicious-looking fare.
"This is nice," she said when their plates were clean and the bacon and syrup-laden pancakes were no longer a distraction.
"Yeah, it is," he agreed.
He met Sam's gaze with a little more restrained emotion than she was expecting, and the domesticity of their situation suddenly hit her.
This is what it would be like.
"Do you ever wonder..." she began, but trailed off as she quickly thought better of her question.
"All the time," Jack answered without hesitation.
She nodded slightly. "Yeah, me too."
They both wondered, but neither were willing to take the big step necessary to allow wonderings to become reality. Sam considered it, as she so often did, but found herself confronting the same fears and hesitations. What if one of them quit and then things between them didn't work out? Did either of them even have a right to quit, knowing the threats to Earth that were out there? And if they tried, would they be allowed to quit, as integral as they both were to the Stargate program?
Beyond those concerns, Sam loved her job and she'd worked very hard to get where she was in her career. She knew the same applied to Jack, and the idea of asking him to give that up sickened her. She would not do it, could not ask him to sacrifice so much.
"Well, I suppose I should drive you back to your car," he observed after several long moments.
"I'd appreciate it."
"No problem, Carter."
Sam enjoyed the quiet morning drive to O'Malley's, the silence between them as comfortable as it was familiar. Somehow, eating breakfast together had diffused some of the tension between them from the night before, and she allowed herself to simply enjoy the company of her commanding officer.
And her friend.
"So, what color are we wearing today, sir?" she asked, hating to break the silence but not wanting to waste the opportunity for conversation between just the two of them.
"I don't know, Carter. Any opinions?"
She shrugged. "I'm fine with whatever."
"Then let's do olive drab."
"Really?" she asked. "Not blue?"
"Not blue. Not today."
His light tone betrayed a deeper meaning, and Sam understood the message: the request for blue was something special, something to be savored and enjoyed. With a glance in her direction, he said jokingly, "Don't worry, Carter. Someday I'll catch up on my laundry and then we can wear whatever color you want."
Sam grinned back at him as she reveled in the promise of 'someday.'